Prannoy and Radhika Roy resign from NDTV’s promoter firm RRPR following takeover by Adani Group

Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy have resigned from the board of RRRRH, a promoter entity of NDTV, with immediate effect.

New Delhi, Nov 30: Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy have resigned from the board of the RRPR Holding Private Limited, the holding company of the NDTV promoters. It was through this that they held more than a quarter of the New Delhi Television Limited shares. The move came after 99.5 per cent of equity of RRPR Holding was transferred to Vishvapradhan Commercial Vishvapradhan Commercial private limited (VCPL) owned by the Adani group.

The information became public during a regulatory filing made with the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Roys, according to the filing resigned from the RRPR board effective November 29. With the exit of the Roys, three new directors have been appointed to the board of the company. They are Adani Group CEP Sudipta Bhattacharya, AMG Media Network CEO and Editor in chief AMG Media Network and Senthil Sinniah Chengalvarayan, director at Adani group owned Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt. Ltd.

In August this year, Adani Group announced that it had acquitted 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV indirectly. The transaction involved the Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd converting the warrants of RRPR Holding Private Ltd into equity. The VCPL decided on exercising the warrants, giving it over 99.5 per cent stake in RRPR. VCPL gained this stake in the media group as RRPR owns 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV.

In 2008, the Roys had taken a loan of Rs 540 crore from Indiabulls to fund an open offer they made to buy the shares of NDTV from the market. The Roys had pledged their shares in NDTV as security. Following this they took a loan from ICICI Bank to payback Indiabulls. This time they also pledged shares of NDTV held under RRPR.

Later they again took an unsecured loan from the VCPL to pay the ICICI loan in exchange of warrants of their shares in NDTV. The money which was given by VCPL to RRPR was from a company which was fully owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group. VCPL was later acquired by the Adani Group led AMG Media Network Ltd.

NDTV had on November 28 informed the BSE that its promoter group RRPR had transferred 99.5 per cent of its equity o VCPL on exercise of the warrants. Now that Adani Group owned 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV, it also made an open offer to purchase 26 per cent shares of NDTV from shareholders as mandated by the rules.

The group has offered to buy around 16 million NDTV shares at an open offer price of Rs 294 which is lower than the current market price of Rs 425 per share.